Diplomats from an unidentified country and a Washington research organisation
considered close to the International Atomic Energy Agency have alleged in recent
weeks that Iran has covered two buildings at a military site to hide a clean-up
of evidence of nuclear weapons related testing.

But two former intelligence analysts with experience in interpreting satellite
photographs of military facilities say the coverings on the two buildings in
published images of the site dont appear to be aimed at hiding anything.

The images show bright pink coverings on the buildings, which the former intelligence
officers say are a clear signal of an Iranian desire to focus U.S. and Western
attention on the site  probably to ensure that it would not be focused
on activities at another site at the huge Parchin military base.

Meanwhile, the IAEA has not been able to explain why Iran would only begin
a clean-up of the Parchin site after the IAEA requested access in January 2012
if it was hiding activities linked to a Ukrainian scientist whose work with
Iran had been revealed in the news media beginning as early as October 2008.

The site in question at Parchin military base is where the IAEA said in a report
last November that Iran had installed a large explosives containment vessel
supposedly to test nuclear weapons designs. The IAEA has been requesting access
to the base to see if there is evidence of such tests.

Former IAEA team leader in Iraq Robert Kelley, one of the few genuine specialists
in the world on remote detection of nuclear activities, has noted a host of
reasons for doubting that such a vessel ever resided at the Parchin site.

The latest episode in the months-long media story of alleged Iranian sanitisation
of the site at Parchin began with an Aug. 22 story by the Associated Press Vienna
correspondent, George Jahn, who has long served as a conduit for a stories leaked
by Israeli officials.

The story quoted two senior diplomats from countries which the
writer could not identify as saying that the sanitisation of the
site by Iran to remove evidence of past nuclear weapons-related research was
now in its final stages, and that some of the clean-up was being
hidden from spy satellite views by screens set up over the site.

Two days later, satellite images of the site dated Aug. 15 published by the
Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) showed that the screens
over the site were actually pink coverings on two buildings.

A Reuters article published earlier that day reported unidentified diplomatic
sources saying the building which the IAEA believed housed an explosives
chamber had been wrapped in scaffolding and tarpaulin that was hiding
any sanitisation or other activity there from satellite cameras.

ISIS director David Albright speculated in an Aug. 24 commentary that the purpose
of the pink coverings on the buildings could be to conceal further cleanup
activity from overhead satellites or to contain the activity inside. He
even suggested that the pink tarp could provide a cover for the demolition
of the buildings, or portions of them while also containing the spread of potentially
contaminated debris.

The Aug. 30 IAEA report, after listing the activities and resultant changes
at the site since January, referred to the images as showing two buildings had
been shrouded and declared that its ability to verify the
information on which its concerns are based has been adversely affected.

The former intelligence analysts, however, have told IPS the suggestion the
pink shrouds are meant to hide clean-up activities from satellite cameras lacks
credibility. Both asked not to be identified in this article.

One of the former officers, who is familiar with efforts by foreign states
seeking to cloak military activities from U.S. spy satellites said, Someone
in Iran wanted the two buildings to be imaged.

The pink covers suggest misdirection, he said, likening it to past
efforts by the former Soviet Union and North Korea to focus the attention of
U.S. intelligence on a specific site in order to keep it away from activities
elsewhere.

Another former intelligence analyst with expertise on photo imagery said the
pink shrouds are exactly the opposite of concealment activities.
The Iranians know perfectly well that the site is being imaged,
the former officer said.

This is the shiny object that the Iranians want ISIS, the
gullible Western press and others to pay attention to, he explained, most
likely to distract attention from activities elsewhere.

New information in the Aug. 30 IAEA report further undermines the credibility
of the larger allegation that Iran has been trying to sanitise the
site in question in 2012. The report notes that the agency notified Iran of
that location only in January 2012, and that satellite imagery of the site for
the period from February 2005 to January 2012 shows virtually no activity
at or near the building housing the containment vessel.

If Iran were actually hiding nuclear experiments using an explosives containment
vessel at the site, it would have been forced to take action on the site after
October 2008, when it learned that Western intelligence agencies had already
identified the Ukranian scientist the IAEA claims helped build the container.

The New York Times reported Oct. 9, 2008 that IAEA officials were investigating
whether a Russian scientist helped Iran conduct complex experiments on how to
detonate a nuclear weapon, according to European and American officials.

That was an obvious reference Vyacheslav Danilenko, a Ukrainian who had worked
for decades in the Soviet nuclear weapons complex, although he specialised in
nanaodiamond production from explosives, before working in Iran from 1996 to
2000.

Danilenkos first name and first initial of his last name, as well as
the fact that he had worked in Iran in the late 1990s, were published in Der
Spiegel Jun. 17, 2010.

If Danilenko had indeed been collaborating with Iran on a containment vessel
for tests of nuclear weapons designs at Parchin, those news media reports would
have triggered Iranian efforts to clean up the site years earlier. But nothing
happened  even after the IAEA November report, which discussed the alleged
vessel  until the IAEA informed Iran that it wanted to visit Parchin and
provided Iran with the specific location in January.

Robert Kelley, who has been top nuclear inspector for the IAEA and project
leader for nuclear intelligence at Los Alamos National Laboratory and director
of the U.S. Department of Energys Remote Sensing Laboratory, has expressed
strong scepticism about the idea that the site shown in a series of satellite
images has anything to do with high explosives, much less nuclear weapons-related
work.

The building in question is not a classical HE (high explosives) building,
that is for sure, Kelley told this writer in late May.

Kelley and the two former intelligence officers agree that the building is
far too close to a major divided highway to be involved in such sensitive testing
activity. The ex-intelligence analysts also said there are no special security
features as would be expected of a top secret facility.

In an article in Janes Intelligence Review Jun. 18, Kelley noted that
the presence of a berm only on one side of the building is consistent with standard
radiation shielding for an X-ray machine to check the quality of missile components
manufactured at Parchin rather than high explosives experiments.

Kelley also noted a number of reasons why the story of the containment vessel
at Parchin doesnt add up.

If Iran were testing nuclear weapons designs, Kelley wrote, it is doubtful
that it would have done so with a containment vessel such as the one described
by the IAEA, noting that the U.S., Soviet Union, China, Iraq and South Africa
did such experiments in the open in remote secret locations, because it enabled
them to make more rapid progress.

The UK used a containment vessel, he wrote, only because of the absence of
such remote locations.

David Albright has argued that Iran needed the vessel to hide its experiments
from spy satellites, but Kelley pointed out that Iran could have simply used
a temporary tent to cover the experiments.

Illegal WMD, state sponsored terrorism without borders, rasism and hate preaching, breaking internacional norms and law…all this fits on one regime only: "Atheistic, rasist, apartheid, murderous colonial ideology visible as "temporary province of Palestine called Israel".
All the reasoning, why Israel this or that, what Israel things etc…is good for nothing.
We "People in 4 corners" deal here with truth Powerfull satanical ideology and its: "THESE FANATICS or ME WITHOUT ZIONISM AND CHANCE FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE!
Let us admit it, creation of state of Israel, knowing the facts about Zionist terrorist ideology, was the biggest mistake of Internacional community and tragedy in making for Whole Mankind….. peter czech
/ Calling Israel province of Palestine should be recogized worldvide, this ideology will never stop in deceptive wars of aggression, creating unrest anywhere to please their Masters – "Gang of Zionist murderous Banksters profiting on supporting crimes against humanity for their greed and endless drive to dominate mankind".
Suporting any opposition to Zionism, supporting Iran really means supporting Live and live of your childern, future generation ….

JoaoAlfaiate

Israel's friends cooking the nuclear books yet again.

Roger Lafontaine

Wild speculation and remote mind-reading, that sure sounds like proof to me.

Leave Iran alone already. They have never harmed me nor my famil,y. RET US ARMY

MvGuy

It is difficult to worry about Iran even trying to construct a bomb WHEN the parties doing all the complaining have hundreds and thousands of more advanced and far deadlier bombs……..

Hard to worry about those that complain when they employ every deceit and means, real and unreal, legal and illegal, including genocide, to disenfranchise and expel the unfortunate people living there for the last thousand years……….. whose land they covet……

Difficult to imagine that the thermo nuclear armed tireless aggressor with the superpower financier and defender, who occupies and or controls the land of EVERY ONE of it's contiguous neighbors should or could be allowed to bring so much opprobrium down on any state that does not pose a threat to them and their genocidal apartheid policies of land confiscation.
God help the poor Palestinian people because the world doesn't seem to have the stomach nor means to come to their aid….. and these attacks on Iran serve as a not so subtle waring against giving them any aid or comfort……..